I Miss the Creativity in Windows

04/11/2015

I have recently decided to treat myself with a new laptop, because the one I had for years has become way too slow and non-efficient for my purposes. It had Windows 7, so this time I decided to give a chance to the famous Windows 8, although from the videos I watched on youtube, I got the impression that Eight is not at all that great…

First thing that is pretty much annoying is the new Start screen. It reminds me of phones and it seems more suitable for touch screens, and not all of us have the luxury of touch screen on our laptops. This new “Start” is badly organized, I have difficulties with finding the icons I want; it is a real quest if you want to find the power button icon, it took me some time to get used to this. The one in Windows 7 was so simple and neat, it worked for so many years, and I really don’t understand why it had to be changed.

Not to mention my problems with Skype! I installed Skype regularly, and it works; but, one big issue keeps bothering me and I really don’t know the solution: I can’t see the notifications and that orange little light, because now it has only full screen window – that is the only way to see that someone is trying to send you a message on Skype. I use Skype for my job, for seeing my family abroad, and I’m almost always online, and I would like to have the opportunity to answer their messages on time (which started to happen very rarely). Moreover, my password for Skype apparently MUST be the same as my login password. Microsoft is just overly attached in this case, it is almost impossible to sign in with some non-Microsoft account. It can be done though, but it is unnecessarily complicated.

As if my troubles are not already irritating enough: my desktop gadgets are gone, and I loved the way they decorated my desktop. They were also very useful for me, and this loss was extremely disappointing. Not only gadgets, but also the classic games like Solitaire, or Minesweeper. I used to play Solitaire when I was bored, and it was some kind of a warm, familiar welcome when you see these games on your new computer. Furthermore, another beautiful Widows feature is removed as far as I can notice: Windows Media Center. I adored this feature, although I must admit I didn’t use it very often; but still, I think it deserves to be there, and it is only one among many interesting features that I really miss now in Windows 8.

I’m sure, of course, that there is a solution for enriching Windows 8 with all these programs by downloading them, or restoring them by some other means, but there should not be this number of mistakes and missing features. I will try maybe Windows 10, because I saw some reviews and discovered that it supports at least some of the previous features, but I am certainly very dissatisfied with Windows 8 experience so far.